Here an add, there an add…the first two thirds of this fight is nothing but killing adds and blowing yourself up properly.

In Phase 1, We left Foreman Feldspar up and just cleaved him down with the other adds, putting the raid on one side at a time while leaving one group of ranged to kill the Bellows Operator on the opposite side of the raid. Security Guards leave shields on the ground that will protect any add within them, so adds shouldn’t be in the shield.

While you’re handling these adds, it’s important to run bombs well–players will be targeted with bombs just like in the Spoils encounter in Siege of Orgrimmar, and bombs also drop on the ground when Engineers die.

If you’re targeted with a bomb or you pick one up, you run it to the Heat Regulator on the side of the room in which you’re fighting and then use your extra action button to blow the bomb up, damaging the Heat Regulator. You have to kill both to proceed to the next part of the fight, and the longer it takes, the more you’re wearing on your healers.

Phase 2 is honestly probably a bigger DPS check than the Phase 3 boss, because getting through Phase 2 quickly makes the rest of the fight much, much easier. During P2, there will be Primal Elementalists channeling around the center area of the room. They’re shielded and immune to all damage, and the only way to break the shield is to kill a Slag Elemental on top of them.

We just decided on a kill order starting from the side of the room we were on and moving around the circle to the other side. When someone is fixated by a Slag Elemental, they stand on top of the Primal Elementalist (you can have more Slags than you need, in which case the extras should just hang out, they don’t hit that hard) and the Elemental is killed.

When the Elemental dies, the Elementalist will lose his shield. If you want to make Phase 2 & Phase 3 more manageable, focus on getting the Elementalists dead before their shield respawns. Use the CDs you have available and give up padding on the Slag Elementals to get the Elementalists down as quickly as possible.

Note: Slag Elementals do some pretty sick AoE damage when they die, so don’t be standing next to them when they explode.

Phase 3 is a boss fight with a ton of raid-wide damage (sorry healers). We started on one side of the room with ranged stacked and then moved out of the puddles on the ground, working our way around the room. Ignore Slag Elementals at this point, they don’t hit hard enough on their fixate targets to matter and it’s not worth trying to kill them and/or risk blowing them up in the raid, just focus the boss down and win.

This is one of those fights that starts out with a couple of mechanics and then just keeps stacking them. Fun fight, though.

The three bosses have to be pushed below 20% at the same time, then you just dps, don’t die to mechanics, and pray. On a timer, the boss with the lowest health that hasn’t already will jump to a ship across from the main platform, and you’ll want a group assigned to grab the hooks and kill the adds on the ship. Each boss has its own ship mechanics/adds, so the order in which you do them depends on your raid. We chose to do Marak > Garan > Sorka.

I’m just going to make a list because that’s easier. Abilities you need to know how to handle as a ranged DPS:

Blood Ritual: Marak will choose a target and start Blood Ritual, which looks like a red squiggly line (yup, dem’s professional-soundin’ werds) connecting the target to the boss. Move so that you create a triangle with the tank who will move into the cone you’ve created and soak the AoE damage she does when Blood Ritual ends.

Rapid Fire: Gar’an will target a player marked with a red arrow and begin to shoot a volley of pain at that person that detonates in an AoE marked by a circle on the ground. Move out of the raid and kite it around the edge of the room. Tip: it moves more slowly than you think it will, so don’t rush or speed boost or you might cause it to arc through the raid. Don’t hurt your friends.

Penetrating Shot: Identical to the Aim on Paragons except that you won’t take splash damage from standing too close in the beam while you soak it, so just pile everyone into it. It can be feigned, guised, and invised just like in Paragons.

How to Be a Boss at Bombs

When one of the bosses goes over to the ship, it will trigger a barrage of bombs on the main platform. This mechanic is stupid easy to avoid taking damage from if you know what to expect.

First: Red targeting circles land around on the ground, not many at all, avoid them. Bombs will appear wherever there was a targeting circle. Get close to one and pay attention to where it is.

Second: Those targeting circles will disappear. As soon as they do, move onto the bomb that was dropped by the circle. In another second, targeting circles will fill the rest of the space that was not previously targeted–basically, anywhere there’s already a bomb will not be targeted.

Third: That bomb you’re standing on is going to start looking really pissed off because it was one of the first to drop. After a few seconds of looking angry, it will explode. Before that happens, move to one of the new bombs.

Fourth: As soon as the first bomb detonates, move back to that spot and wait for the rest of the bombs to explode.

It sounds like a lot, but I promise once you see it, it will make sense.

The last phase, after they’re pushed, is pretty chaotic and hella fun. And you might die. You’ll probably die. Burn them down one at a time, kill turrets as they spawn (and avoid the fire spitting from them), and continue to handle the other mechanics.

There’s 2 more mechanics to be aware of in this phase: Dark Hunt is just damage, but when it ticks off it hurts for a lot, so use a CD. Lesson learned. There’s also a debuff called Convulsive Shadows that should NOT be dispelled. It will hurt a billion times more if you dispel it than if you just let it fall off.

Easy peasy, and if you did Gruul in Burning Crusade, there will be a few things that feel awfully familiar. Remember that Shatter? Be on the lookout for Petrifying Gaze and spread out if you have it. Avoid Cave-Ins (like old times!). Avoid the big ground smash effect, as well.

Other than that, if you’re a dps or a healer, you’ll be stacked in one of two groups that are 10 yards apart for soaking Inferno Slice and doing your thing.

There’s nothing to Phase 1 when the tanks get their Acid management all settled. If you’re ranged, stand in a stack and move together out of the puddles on the ground, conserving as much space as possible. If you have to run over those puddles at some point in Phase 2, you’ll be glad you didn’t take up half the room with them.

In Phase 2, priority 1 is living, priority 2 is dpsing crates. George will face a direction and roll in that direction, turning in an L shape and crashing into walls. The best advice I can give for living is to keep up with the boss. If you just follow him around, making sure you’re almost always in the area he just rolled, living is easy because he never rolls back on himself.

Oh, and if you happen to be that class that casts Starfall, it’s pretty fun for crates.

This fight is almost mindless for ranged. It’s like a heroic 5-man boss. Kill boss, aoe/cleave adds, move out of the white swirlies on the ground so you don’t get stuck to the floor, kill spears that are impaling your friends, DoT/cleave other spears, don’t stand in fire.

The only really stupid deaths I had were on this boss. I’m a little too fond of getting clipped by moving trains, apparently; and managed to die twice to them.

The best advice I can give you is watch the doors. Throughout the fight, one or two of the four train tracks will activate and a train will come running through it, likely killing you (or nearly killing you if you’re a warlock, I guess) if you’re standing in its path. We marked the tracks with colored markers to more easily identify where trains and adds would be.

Kill boss, cleave adds, focus the Man-at-Arms and the cannon operators when they’re up. Move away from bombs, move out of the gravity grenades that will attempt to suck you in. And I speak from person experience when I say: don’t get run over by a train!

Side note: We have the best warlocks. Also, I think around 11pm we’re all half-mad.

This one gave us a little bit of trouble. We wiped 5 times on her, more than any other boss.

Ultimately, this is what we did:

Stay spread out so you don’t chain Lava Slash, and mark a stack point for soaking Molten Torrent. Anyone who can solo it, should (hunters, spriests, mages), anyone who can’t needs ranged to stack with them in the circle to spread the damage.

When the wolves come out, kill them evenly (they need to die at the same time). If you get fixated, move in an arc between where the ranged are spread and where the melee are standing so that you don’t run a fire line through people in the raid (our tanks/melee positioned themselves so they wouldn’t get hit by them as we kited).

After a couple of tries spread out, we realized that was kind of idiotic, so we stacked our range, moved out of Rippling Smash, and moved into Runes when they appeared. Each person stands in one rune which will turn into a grasping hand. We found that killing the grasping hands before the end of Thunderous Blows was NOT a concern, so we just started DPSing them as soon as the Thunderous Blows cast started. Seemed to work out.

So there was Christmas, and that was cool. I got a new video card and I can’t even handle how much different the game looks. Family all got exactly what they wanted, and now they’re all going back to work and school, which is what I wanted.

Oh, and then there was raiding, and we got Mythic Brackenspore & Tectus down:

Pets & Friends

Also this past month, our guild held a holiday event with open invitations to those who wanted the opportunity to buy the pet reward from the Guild Challenge Mode Gold achievement. We had a bunch of people hop in for their pet, and they have all been extremely kind and grateful–it’s been a pleasure to share it.

Not a bad way to go into the year, hm? Happy New Year, and hope all of your raids and missions are successful! :-)